


Fix the Twist in You

by lady_ragnell



Series: Post-s3 Headcanon [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 22:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The longer Merlin's lies go on, the harder Arthur finds it to trust him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fix the Twist in You

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "All the Same," by the Sick Puppies, which is unquestionably my Arthur Knows song.
> 
> This is headcanon I've been playing with since s1 and the only one that starts off with being explicitly jossed, but also probably the one I'll never stop believing in on some level.

Sometimes, especially now that Camelot is practically his and Merlin is helping him every step of the way, Arthur wonders if he ought to feel guilty for treating Merlin as he does. The looks Guinevere and Lancelot and even Leon give him say that he is sometimes too severe, that the bruises on Merlin’s shoulders and ribs from thrown objects are far too much. But they don’t know the truth--Merlin doesn’t know that he knows the truth.

The truth is that bruises are better than a pyre. That sneers are better than the chopping block.

The truth is that Merlin is magic. The truth is that Merlin is his best friend. So he can’t have him killed, but he can’t trust him, either.  
*  
It wasn’t something Arthur figured out all at once. There was no moment when he looked at Merlin and saw him weaving spells and knew, not until much later.

At the beginning, Merlin was barely a person, just an incompetent waste of space who couldn’t do his chores correctly to save his life, who nearly got himself killed for Gwen by confessing himself as a sorcerer, of all things (and Arthur shouldn’t think that’s funny now, he really shouldn’t).

Actually, it was something small that started it, in the end. When Arthur gestured Merlin forward to make his excuses to his father after almost running off with Sophia (which he still doesn’t remember, even after knowing more of the truth), and Merlin widened his eyes and tried to look sincere and made his excuses, Arthur made note of it, though he didn’t realize he had until later. _Ah, so this is what Merlin looks like when he lies._

He didn’t think, then, to look back and figure out when else Merlin might have lied to him. He wishes now that he had, when his memories were fresher.  
*  
Arthur didn’t figure it out in Ealdor, though he should have. Will took the blame for the sorcery, and died, and at the pyre, when he looked at Merlin, Arthur saw something else behind the overwhelming grief and guilt:

 _So this is what Merlin looks like when he lies._

And after that, Merlin went right back to bright smiles and inane chatter at Camelot, right back to being disrespectful and insubordinate and useless on hunts, but it lurked in his eyes and Arthur couldn’t stop thinking it: _Merlin’s lying_. It was there all the time, too, and he’d just thought Merlin was hiding the sadness over his childhood friend, thinking Arthur wouldn’t sympathize.

But then there were a few terrifyingly honest moments at Gedref, where there was no hint of untruth in Merlin’s eyes when he offered to die, to take Arthur’s place. And when Arthur woke, not dead after all, he’d expected Merlin to be happy and for the honesty to remain, the defeat of the unicorn’s curse and Arthur’s life enough to remind him that life after Will went on.

He was disappointed when he woke to Merlin’s overly-guileless expression and the veil drawn across the truth once again.  
*  
Arthur might never have figured it out if it weren’t for the Questing Beast laying him low while the matter of Merlin’s honesty was still so prominent in his mind.

When Merlin came after he woke, there was that honesty again, the same he’d seen at Gedref, but it kept flickering in and out--no trace of a lie when Merlin (of all people) professed himself happy to be a servant. None when he told Arthur he would be a great king. But then, there, again--when Merlin said he wasn’t leaving. When Merlin said he had nothing more to say and left.

 _This is what Merlin looks like when he lies._

Arthur was still confined to his rooms when Merlin and Gaius disappeared, and he had time to think about his injury, and his recovery, and a few other missing pieces (Ealdor-Sophia-Valiant) clicked into a sickening sort of sense.

 _Merlin is magic._

Merlin came back worn and pale and glassy-eyed and Arthur didn’t say it.  
*  
By the time Cedric came, Arthur was _angry_.

He’d had time to come to terms with the magic, and he prided himself on being a good judge of character. Merlin wouldn’t kill him. The honesty in his loyalty was almost painful, in fact. But Merlin didn’t trust him, and in a way that was worse, and it made Arthur wonder about both Merlin and himself, why Merlin would be so loyal to a man he wouldn’t trust, if the part of Arthur that was fiercely protective of Merlin’s loyalty and admiration was deluded when all that was tainted with the simple fact that trust didn’t come with Merlin’s respect.

It would have been easiest to send Merlin away, out of his sight, and he’d tried to do it with Cedric, fed up with the lies that he couldn’t stop seeing once he’d started, going mad from trying to figure out the truth from what Merlin wasn’t telling him. But Cedric had been a thief, and Arthur took Merlin back, as he always would, and found Guinevere in the process.

Guinevere stood up to him as Merlin does. She took him in and teased him a bit and she was safe and sweet and _honest_ and he focused all his attention on her so he would stop thinking about Merlin’s lies.

It even worked, for a while.  
*  
It wasn’t that things with Guinevere were easy. They still aren’t. There was Lancelot (who’s back again, though hopefully by now his position is secure), and the differences in their stations, and the fact that spending time together was suspicious in everyone’s eyes. Hell, it would have been easier to fall in love with Merlin, in that respect. But he could trust Gwen-- _can_ trust Gwen. She’s the most faithful person he knows, and her faith in him was more important than he could say, with Morgana looking pale and shaken and Merlin more distant and dishonest by the day.

His mind still ran to Merlin more than it should, just as it still does (just as it always might, and that thought scares him more than it ought), but with Morgana disappearing, Gwen being kidnapped, and his father marrying a troll, there were plenty of other things to worry about. Even though Merlin was there through all of that, wide-eyed and lying through his teeth. Arthur thought about handing him over to Aredian when he came, just to have done with it, but Gwen told him not to stand by while an innocent man died and Merlin almost broke down over Gaius’s arrest and he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

If Aredian had come a few weeks later, after the lie Arthur still can’t forgive (perhaps won’t ever be able to forgive), Arthur still isn’t sure if he would have passed Merlin over.  
*  
Arthur had softened up on Merlin a bit, during the mess with Morgause, willing to trust with the sorceress helping that Merlin wasn’t an outlier, that perhaps his father was wrong. She’d showed him his mother, and he’d _known_ that his father was wrong. He’d gone to mete out justice.

And Merlin … Merlin, whose life was in danger from the king every day, Merlin who spoke so wistfully of the day that Arthur would be king … Merlin saved his father’s life. Gasped out that Morgause lied, that Arthur hadn’t really seen his mother.

It wasn’t until the tears had dried and Arthur had left his father behind in the throne room, both of them ready to lick their wounds, that the treacherous thought skated across his mind:

 _This is what Merlin looks like when he lies._

Perhaps it was cruel, to look out the window and thank Merlin for showing him the evils of magic. But Merlin can be cruel too.  
*  
The lies piled on, from there. His missing breakfasts and Merlin’s more-obvious-than usual lies. His shiftiness over Morgana’s disappearance, and then the whole of Camelot going to sleep and Morgana being kidnapped again. And then the dragon, freed and wreaking destruction and forcing them to flee to find a Dragonlord. One who apparently decided to come with them for no reason. Merlin’s badly-hidden tears at his death, Merlin’s bad excuses when Arthur woke up in a field with no dragon carcass to show for his apparent victory.

And, if it weren’t for the moments of honesty, Arthur would have sacked him for good, or handed him over. At least he thinks he would. But when the lies got to be too much, there was truth too--the obvious grief that Arthur missed the cause of in his search for a monster, doubled and doubled again when Morgana disappeared. Sneaking around the edges of their quest to find the Dragonlord, and hiding in the looks Balinor and Merlin gave each other that last morning.

His life would be simpler, if he could hate Merlin for his lies, if not for what he is. Instead, he was caught up in anger at the lies he couldn’t untangle the truth from, in knowing that his ( _I know I’m a prince, so we can’t be_ ) friend doesn’t trust him enough to know Arthur won’t have him killed.  
*  
By the time they found Morgana, his anger had overwhelmed him. He couldn’t show it, not without telling Merlin that he knew--and he is still waiting, will wait as long as it takes, for Merlin to _tell him_ or at least to let him see--but he knows everyone wonders why, even though he’s grown ready to take the throne and do so well, he has started treating his manservant like he did those he had before Merlin, and worse. Why he bruises Merlin, uses him for training, snaps at him.

It’s for every time Merlin smiles at him without art and lies. About Morgana, about his father, about himself, about why he always seems to disappear during a crisis.

He goes to Guinevere whenever it gets to be too much, and loses himself in her. Loves her because she will not lie to him, because she trusts him with herself. Sees his kingdom and how it will be with her at his side, and defies his father in defense of that dream, even if he went a bit far with it, when Merlin showed up to save the day in his most asinine fashion and then stumbled over his lies when his stupid disguise came off.

But he can’t keep away from Merlin for long, and he is rewarded with moments of truth ( _”Where were you?” “Dying”_ ) that make him hope that someday Merlin will trust him, so he can ask the questions he always wants to ask. So he can perhaps take Merlin’s advice when he gives it and not wonder what brought him to be so wise so young ( _”I think you’re mad, I think you’re all mad, people should marry for love.”_ Was it Will who made him think of love like that? Or Morgana, before she betrayed them? Or was there still more that Merlin kept from him entirely, on the weeks when every word out of his mouth was a lie?).  
*  
Arthur thinks sometimes that he would love Merlin if he could only trust him.  
*  
He doesn’t send Merlin away, even if he should. He’s no fool. Merlin has saved his life more than he has any right to expect, and he won’t take that for granted. Especially now, with his father broken and sickened by Morgana’s betrayal and Camelot and Cenred’s kingdom both effectively under his control. Merlin is a shadow at his side, making him smile against his will and eat when he nearly forgets about it. His faith in Arthur is almost a palpable thing these days, despite the lack of trust, and his grin whenever Arthur makes a point of chatting with his newest knights, the ones there on sufferance, is part of what makes him remember it’s worth defying his father when he’s so frail. He’s there while Guinevere helps rebuild Camelot in other ways, back to seeing Arthur rarely again.

Arthur can see the Camelot they’ll build together after his father is gone. The thought of being king no longer fills him with quiet panic as it once did. Now he can see Guinevere and her sweetness and her faith in the kingdom on one side, and Merlin wielding power Arthur can still barely comprehend on the other. He can see a Camelot with magic thriving and helping the people, helping his governing.

He can see the Merlin he so rarely gets to see--the one who’s perhaps not as cheerful as the one who gets him out of bed every morning, but the one who looks at him with nothing but complete honesty and trusts him with truth. And when he wakes up from those dreams to a Merlin hidden behind walls and with loyalty and faith but nothing close to what Arthur wants from him once again, he reminds himself that someday it will happen.

Not yet, but someday.


End file.
